There is an ominous – perhaps a fatal – presumptuousness in living in a place by the imposition on it of one’s ideas and wishes. And that is the way we white people have lived in America throughout our history, and it is the way our history now teaches us to live here. Surely there could be a more indigenous life than we have. There could be a consciousness that would establish itself on a place by understanding its nature and learning what is potential in it. A man ought to study the wilderness of a place before applying to it the ways he learned in another place.
